I know I said there was a new album in the works, in fact almost ready… but that’s not the case anymore. I’ve decided to rerecord many of the tracks, and go for a rockier sound.

The last full-length Paris and the Hiltons album I did — READING JOURNALS — was ambitious, weird, almost impossible to pin down half the time, and it was so focused on the merging of literature and many musical genres that I got wiped out.

I want this album to be a lot more straightforward, accesible, even catchy. So it’s back to the studio to make it so.

As many of you have no choice but to know by now, Jack Joslin is leading a ten-man, one-woman literary project based on my band, Paris and the Hiltons. As the project nears its completion, I’m weirded out and frequently amused by the bullshit he’s been up to. And he’s just allowed me to post an excerpt from the book.

Aimee looked beautiful, maybe, I guess, in a crass and unoriginal way: which is to say that her hair shone like a thousand angels buffing their halos, her eyes like the glittering lost and legendary emeralds of Nabban Deek, her teeth a row of calcium cakes protecting a slimy tongue of naughtiness. Oh and to say nothing of her bosom! But this book is designed to titillate as well as educate, so I shall describe them. They were mammalian orbs of nourishment, cruelly swaddled in cotton and lace, and though, I (Jack) am a modern liberal, prone to buoy up the losing side in any struggle for equality any particular disenfranchised groups may have (except for anything involving the support of and donation towards parrots – because parrots are obsessive and selfish in their love) and so this naturally makes me, Jack (I), a supporter of women’s rights. But Aimee’s breasts summoned a slathering neanderthal chauvinist from your dribbling narrator; twin skin magnets that would not release my swayed eyeballs from her torso. Her legs, breathless slices from a slab of pure joy, as Michelangelo used to make “Michelangelo’s David” or Botticelli’s “Venus Standing on Clam”, all the great artworks, distilled here into her legs, leading upward to, well, let’s not mince words. Her vagina.

I was no longer in love with Aimee. Let me just repeat that, because I suspect you of thinking I’m lying to you. So let me say it again: I’M IN LOVE WITH AIMEE. Okay? No feelings at all. Let’s move on. I shall leave the above unedited as proof of my unwavering dedication to presenting the facts, and only the facts.

The new Paris and the Hiltons album, Reading Journals, is finished. It will be released in three parts, because it’s long and nobody will bother with it if I release it all at once.

The first part, Puzzles of Ithaca, comes out in a few days. I’ll make it available for free on the PATH Bandcamp page as soon as I can. It will contain the first seven tracks on the album.

This is the culmination of a year’s worth of musical collaborations with my friend Sam Folkes. We started out making stupid cabaret rock, and I think this album shows a more interesting side to our work.

I appreciate the occasional encouragement we’ve received and I hope this album finds an audience.

Three reasons why you should be excited about the new Paris and the Hiltons album:

1. A new sound. With Sam fully on board, some compromises had to be made pretty quickly. For the most part, the “old PATH” is pretty much dead (for now, anyway). There are very few straightforward rock songs on this new album. Instead, there’s a lot of dark piano tracks, IDM-style drums, weird harmonies, and slightly more eloquent lyrics. There’s jazz, electronica, and symphonic stuff. It’s nothing people are used to from PATH. There’s even a bit of a cappella.

2. Around twenty tracks. I’ve broken up with the old formula of having eight songs per album. This is a monster of a creation, and I’m happy with that. It means more variety, more room for little experiments, and hopefully a more fulfilling listening experience, etc.

3. It’s like, some kind of concept album. By which I mean many of its songs are based on one of my favorite novels, “Absalom, Absalom!” by William Faulkner. Originally the whole thing was going to be a musical interpretation of the book, but it’s broadened out a little bit. There are several tracks that deal with biblical themes. There’s a very weird version of the traditional Jewish song, “Go Down, Moses,” which also happens to be the name of another Faulkner novel.

So: the second Paris and the Hiltons album, “Fracture and Slice”, is on its way to completion. It will probably feature eight tracks, like the first album. I may add a ninth track, but that’s not certain yet.

Overall this is a more aggressive album, but the mellow bits are far more delicate than anything I’ve released before. It will feature, for the first time, my collaboration with my friend Susanna Russell on “I Fucking Love You,” the first irony-free love song I have worked on.

My friend Sam Folkes is also involved in this project, and in fact he has taken on the challenge of being the main instrumentalist for the third and final Paris and the Hiltons album in this little trilogy. Given his great talent, this is going to be a very fulfilling and different way of making music.

As usual, I will be contacting the very friendly and gifted Christopher Leary at Melograf Mastering when it’s time to master the album. I have nothing but praise for his work, both as a musician and as a master engineer.

Right — it’s time to make the muzix some more. There will be further updates.